Allowing for the possibility that you have read the debates in Congress for the entire decade, etc., you conveniently leave out of the equation the fact that both the Pierce and Buchanan Administrations were very friendly to the South. They did not have that much to complain of, except the fact that mobs in the North were interfering with Southern rights in some areas, and that the Abolitionist influence was on the rise in the new Republican Party.
It wasn't about slavery per se. It didn't matter what the particular precipitant was. The fact was that the South was being smeared in the North, and in the four way division at the polls in 1860, a purely sectional party--entirely non-Southern had captured the Federal Executive.
If you are not aware of the viciousness of the Abolitionist assault on their fellow Americans, read Daniel Webster's comments on the same: Webster Address. (We quote Webster's speech, rather than a Southern one, because Webster was definitely anti-slavery. But he loved the Union and the Constitutional compact, which respected all the States, more than his personal feelings on that particular issue.)
I do not know why you, as a man interested in history, do not have the decency and kindness to respect those Southern Negroes who were in fact loyal to their States. Why does that bother you? Booker T. Washington also alludes to that fact in his classic speech in Atlanta, 1895: Booker T. Washington Address.
William Flax
I'm well aware of abolitionists. I'm also well aware that southern slave owners engaged in mob action when someone so much as breathed a word about abolition---so much so that mob violence related to slavery (but not on the part of slaves) constituted the single most common type of mob activity in the antebellum south.
It wasn't about slavery per se. It didn't matter what the particular precipitant was. The fact was that the South was being smeared in the North, and in the four way division at the polls in 1860, a purely sectional party--entirely non-Southern had captured the Federal Executive. What were the "smears" against the South, that the plantation owners held slaves? That the slaves who refused to accept slavery were often treated with incredible cruelty? I daresay that if I held you in the kindliest form of slavery imaginable: requiring little or no work from you, feeding you "three squares a day", seeing to your health and welfare, allowing you to go where you please, and demanding only that you acknowledge my ownership of your person and the "fact" that all your "privileges" have been granted by me, you would find that situation truly intolerable and rebel. Haven't you seen the pictures of slaves with there backs covered with layer upon layer of scars, or the photographs of slaves shackled and collared for the hideous offense of attempting to run away to freedom? Or are you a Holocaust denier in your spare time?
If you are not aware of the viciousness of the Abolitionist assault on their fellow Americans, read Daniel Webster's comments on the same: Webster Address. I am surprised that you cited this Webster extemporaneous speech, not because Webster was pro-abolition "Yankee" (in the original sense of that word), but because it defeats more of your argument (i.e. that the looming Civil War was not primarily about slavery) than it supports. Yes, as a stickler for law and Constitution (as then construed), Webster was not happy with the "illegal" excesses of the abolitionists. When we read the rest of the speech, however, we learn that when the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, Southern lawmakers unanimously agreed on the principles of no extension of slavery North of the Ohio, elimination of the slave trade and no expansion of slavery into the territories (all of which would in Webster's time become the very "bones of contention" for Southron hotheads who believed that the aforementioned principles had been "imposed" on them by Northern abolitionists). Indeed, Webster in this speech you so happily cited speaks of a new wave of Southern enthusiasm for slavery which coincided with the a massive increase in the popularity of cotton fabric in the US and other countries, and the resultant expansion of the plantation system to meet the higher demand for Old King Cotton. (Parenthetically, for the longest time it was an article of faith amongst the Henry Steele Commager-era historians that had it not been for the Yankee ingenuity of Eli Whitney in inventing the cotton gin, slavery might have died in the South long before the Civil War.)
Now, since you choose to use the words of the consummate Yankee to bolster your arguments, I will go you one better as to your contention that slavery was not at the root of the Civil War. The citation is from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession: Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. How anyone can read this, or any of the other Confederate state declarations, for that matter, and conclude other than that slavery was (at the very least to the Confederate States) the "root" cause of the Civil War, defies logic as the ancient greek philosophers taught it.